I honestly didn’t know if I had ever seen Nick so happy. He was almost always smiling, so it was hard to tell. You’d never catch him without a grin on his face, so it was easy to assume the guy had things on lock.
But this was a different. It was a quiet kind of happiness. The kind that you wouldn’t be able to see unless you were staring deep in his eyes.
There wasn’t anything more beautiful.
It lasted only a moment. A serene, crystalline moment. Then he caught me looking and replaced it quickly with a mischievous grin.
“Abby...” he leaned down, kissing me lightly beneath my ear, “do you think that we could maybe skip ahead past all the other talking I’m sure needs to happen at this point?”
His hand slid underneath my toga of sheets, gently parting my legs. I tilted my head to the side, biting my lip with a comical frown.
“I don’t know...in my experience, these discussions are supposed to go on for hours. I’m sure there’s a lot more that needs to get out there. I certainly have a lot more to say...”
He nodded quickly, but kept his eyes focused on my lips—completely preoccupied with the task at hand.
“You talk...”
He slid himself inside me with a gentle thrust.
“...I’ll listen.”
Chapter 19
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, Nick found me some clothes after all. As it turned out, James
kept an assortment of clothing for guests almost as impressive as Nick’s own, and it took me no time at all to find something to my liking. He dressed down as well, looking sexy as hell in a fitted sweater and dark jeans, before the two of us wandered hand in hand down the stairs.
A whispered argument was echoing up from the kitchen, and we paused at the same time—listening with a pair of matching grins.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” James hissed. “You heard it yourself—they’re fighting in there. I absolutely forbid you to go bursting in with breakfast!”
Ferdie whispered something back, something unintelligible, and James responded by cursing quietly in at least seven different languages.
“I swear—the last thing they want right now is scones!”
“Actually,” I murmured to Nick, “a scone sounds pretty good.”
He laughed silently, squeezing my hand.
Another quip from Ferdie, answered by a termination threat from James.
“No, British pastries are not the answer to the world’s problems—”
They broke apart suddenly as the two of us rounded the corner—springing away with matching looks of guilt. James was quick to transform his into a tentative smile, but Nick beat him to the punch.
“Hey man!” he said cheerfully, clapping him once on the shoulder. “Did I hear someone say there were scones?”
James gave him a long look, then turned abruptly on his heel and headed down the hall.
“You guys are killing me, right now...”
AFTER BREAKFAST, THE three of us went back down to the lake. James had opted to go swimming, but since it was the middle of winter and neither Nick nor I were allowed to die of hypothermia for at least three months, we politely declined. Instead, we stood on the pebbly shore, watching as he did laps from one end of the expanse to the other.
“That looks really good on you,” I said casually, gesturing to Nick’s clothes as we strolled leisurely along. “Good thing you and James are the same size.”
He glanced down in surprise, before shaking his head. “These are actually mine—I keep some stuff here. I have for years.”
I thought about that for a while, casting occasional looks between him and the house.